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| View from the Peak |
On 7th
day of December 2013, we climbed the Kudremukh peak at 3:30PM. After a long gap
of many months and multiple postponements we five – Lakshminarayan, Satyadev,
Sagar, Kavitha & I decided to go to Kudremukh peak. We missed our usual
champions Roopa & Ravi this time as they were committed to other plans.
Usually, we go in a sleeper bus to the nearest trekking point, but this time we
had booked “Innova” car. We left Bangalore at around 10:45 PM on 6th
December night & plan was to reach Horanadu by morning 5:00 AM.
We
took Hassan, Belur, Chickmagalur route but the bad roads after Chickmagalur spoiled
all our plan and we reached Horanadu by 6:30 AM. We took two rooms in the lodge
adjacent to the temple and took bath quickly before visiting the temple. It was
around 10:00 AM when we came out of temple after having breakfast at temple.
After checking out of the lodge, we started our travel towards Kudremukh &
on the way we again filled our stomach with nice Idli & Poori at “Nagagiri
comforts” on the banks of Bhadra river.
Balegal,
is the place where we were told to come by our guide Mr. Raje gowda. It is
around 16 KMS from Horanadu via Kalasa. From there we were picked up by Raje
gowda’s person in a 4x4 drive Jeep to another place called Mullodi. It’s around
10 KMS journey to Mullodi and the drive in an open Jeep was horrible. Going by
walk was an option, but we did not want to try that as we were already late by
3 hours. We had thought of starting the trek by 8:00AM, but it was 11:30AM when
we reached Raje gowda’s house at Mullodi. After collecting our packed “Lemon
rice” for the lunch & paying the Forest entry fee of 275.00 INR per head,
we started our trek towards peek. Each trek group must be accompanied by a
guide, but we were lucky to have none and we followed another group of 10
people. Most of the other group members were not serious about trek, but were
there for only fun.
Initial
path of the trek looked most like Tadiyandamol. But we were proved wrong very
quickly. After walking for an hour or so, we reached a point where we saw a
lone tree with a circular cement platform around it. It looked like Buddha
meditated under that tree & we named it “Bodhi Vriksha” J. After
1.5 Hours of walking also, there was no clue of the peak. We saw so many peaks
around and thought the trail will lead to one of these peaks but it was just going
around the peaks and no sign of climbing up. Lakshmi pointed at a very distant
peak and said that is the Kudremukh peak. Oh! God! It looked like we are not
going to reach that peak today. The worst part is we have to come back all the
way before it is dark. I started thinking: Are we on the right track!? A young
man by name Nagaraj at the age of 70 came to our rescue. He pointed at the peak
and showed few groups climbing up towards the peak. Hmm, we did not have any
choice but to walk silently towards our destination. After few more minutes of
walking, we hit a hill and started climbing it. We could clearly see the
gigantic peak from here and those trekkers looked like small Ants on top of a
Jaggery cube. We had walked almost 5 kilometers and another stretch of same
distance had to be covered. Lakshmi had bought Oranges, and that was a very big
life saver for me. Lack of sleep on the previous day & scorching sun above
the head has made the trek uncomfortable. Since we had to go back on the same
day, we did not carry any backpack except Sagar (he was carrying the packed
lunch for all) and that was a great relief. We rested under the shade of a tree
till Sathya & Kavitha joined us. The other group which started with us
reached there after some 15 minutes. They were also so tired and decided to go
back from there.
We
resumed our trekking, entered the forest patch and as soon as we came out of
it, saw the trail going upwards towards the peak. Finally at 3:30pm we reached
the peak. It was like a trekker’s conference on top of that hill. There was a
huge gathering of around 25-30 people from various places. We soon finished our
packed “Lemon rice”, took some photo shots and rest. By that time all the
people started going back and we had to walk back very quickly to reach the
base before it gets dark. Walking downhill is bit more difficult than climbing
up. You have to be very careful about your knee & ankle. Sagar & I were
the first to come back to base camp. Others joined after 30 minutes. Nice onion
pakodas & coffee helped to gain the lost energy.
We
had to wait for two hours before our Jeep arrived to drop us at Balegal. To
save time, we finished dinner at Raje gowda’s house and started journey back to
Bangalore at around 10PM. This time, instead of Chickmagalur route, driver took
the Kottigehara, Mudigere bypass & Belur directly and he said the route is
very good and that saved almost 3 hours of our journey time. By morning 3 AM we
were in Bangalore and after dropping each one at their door step, I reached
home at 4:30 AM.
Approximate
cost of the trek was 2,500/- INR per head (10,000/- Innova + 500/- Breakfast + 1250/-
Forest fee + 500/- Lunch & Dinner (100/- head) ).
